


Falling

by Gelsey



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:44:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gelsey/pseuds/Gelsey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first lesson of flying is to get back up when you fall down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [myownmuggle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/myownmuggle/gifts).



No one ever expected him to fall.

Viktor Krum was internationally acclaimed. He was an expert flyer, capable of the Wronski Feint, among other dangerous moves. He’d crashed once or twice, but never more spectacularly than a broken bone. _Well,_ he thought darkly, _it wasn’t like this isn’t a broken bone._ The difference being that even though the spine could be healed, not even magic could fix what the broken bone had damaged.

Such injuries weren’t unheard of, of course, on the Quidditch circuit, but they were rather rare. So many unseen precautions were in place, including people to cast slowing spells to catch someone who falls if they can. They tried with him, Viktor knew. He could remember the spell snagging him, trying to slow him; it even succeeded somewhat. But nothing could help the angle he landed at, just enough velocity on just enough of a jut in the ground to crack his vertebra.

It ended everything, he thought. There was no way to ride a broomstick, not when he couldn’t control his legs, and it was like he no longer had them. Just two heavy, useless things. He was told he was lucky—he had control just above his waist. But without his legs, he didn’t feel lucky, not at all.

Most days he spent brooding at the window or in darkness, depending on the depth of his depressed mood. The sky made him bitter, but the lack of sky made him restless and despondent. Visitors were few and far between. His teammates couldn’t bear him or the reminder of that this could happen to them. The groupies weren’t interested in a crippled player, at least one who couldn’t walk—or do other things. And his friends, well… most of his friends fell into one of those groups or the other.

So he ignored the knock at the door, staring out the window into the dark. He only looked up when someone huffed. “Well, they told me you were grumpy, but they didn’t tell me you’d knocked all your manners out of your head,” said a familiar voice. His head jerked reflexively.

“Hermione?” he said, clutching vainly at the blanket over his dead legs.

She flicked a wand and lit the lamps, coming in with a faint smile of exasperation on her lips. “Viktor. I’m sorry it took so long, I didn’t hear until just the other day,” she said quietly, eyes on his, not glancing at him to assess him like everyone else did.

“You should not be here,” he told her, still taken aback by her sudden arrival. He hadn’t seen her in months; last she’d told him, she was off on a trip to America, to study runic magic with a Native American shaman.

“Why not?” she asked frankly, pulling a chair to sit next to him. “You don’t return my owls, you don’t tell me you were hurt… of course I’m going to come.” She reached out to put her hand over his on his lap, but he jerked his hands away, trying to pull from her touch completely. She frowned at him and stubbornly but gently laid her hand on his knee, though he couldn’t feel it. He watched it warily, as if it was a spider ready to attack.

“You just. You should not,” he said shortly, even less eloquent than usual.

Her lips set. “Stubborn,” she said, but her hand remained. She was, he knew intimately, very stubborn herself. Perhaps, he thought looking at her, more stubborn than him, he realized.

“Hermione…”

“The first lesson of flying you taught me, Viktor, was to get back up when you fall down.” It had been a series of hard lessons, and he had made her get back up on the broom every single time until she was competent if not greatly skilled on it.

“I can’t get up ever again,” he said bitterly, gesturing at his dead and useless legs.

“How do you know, if you don’t _try_?” she challenged, eyes bright as she leaned toward him. “You haven’t even tried the therapies yet. Try, Viktor.”

Her pleading hurt; her hope hurt. His shoulders hunched and he wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. Not from her, who suffered from her own hurts and persevered every day. He leaned forward, hand curving around the back of her neck as his head rested against hers. He took one breath, and another, and she let him have that silence, mirroring his position, fingers carded into his hair at the back of his neck.

“I’ll try,” he said finally, and she smiled, moved forward, and slid onto his lap, nudging his head onto her shoulder and holding him tight.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do. – Confucius
> 
> Author's Notes: Inspired from several things and people (Bambu, you among others). Thanks to delayed_poet for looking at it.


End file.
